hey neill,
thanks a lot for the info - sorry it took so long to take another stab at it.
i definitely did not have RW tied low so i made that change and your random fruit example is working now!
you can add this device to your HCL i guess. 
(at least, it works with one of the two display lines)
also, being new to datasheets (and microcontrollers, and electronics, and...), i'm having a hard time figuring out how to get the backlighting for this thing to work. the datasheet is sort of confusing to me - it seems like I can use pins 1&2 OR 15&16 OR the two pads on the side of the display?
also, it seems to say that it wants 4.2V for the backlight. i had read somewhere that i could use the ~.7V voltage drop of pretty much any diode to get me in that range from our normal 5V. my multimeter is saying that i'm at 5.06V without a diode and 4.8V with the diodes i've tried - a little too high? maybe i've already fried the backlighting because i think i may have given it the 4.8V while i was playing around - i remember seeing backlighting for a moment at some point.
thanks again for the help,
rob